Texas university system dominates rank of world's innovative schools

It still remains to be seen how a school can be among the best in the world and yet the second best in Texas, but never matter. A new ranking from Reuters has placed the University of Texas System among the world's most innovative universities.

According to an October 11 release, theReuters Top 100: The World's Most Innovative Universities "identifies and ranks the educational institutions doing the most to advance science, invent new technologies and power new markets and industries." The UT System ranked No. 6 out of the 100 best in the world. The 2018 ranking is a jump up from its No. 9 spot in 2017.

In addition to the flagship University of Texas at Austin, the system is composed of seven other public universities across the state as well as six health institutions. These include the University of Texas at Arlington, UT-Dallas, and UT-Southwestern Medical Center. Reuters notes that because of how the UT System reports on innovation, it assessed the entire enterprise rather than individual universities.

As a whole, the UT System boasts an impressive number of accolades that helped it scoot up three spots. As Reuters notes, chief among these accolades is the National Science Foundation's $60 million grant to the Texas Advanced Computing Center at The University of Texas at Austin to build a supercomputer and the system's $2.7 billion in annual research expenditures. (Not to mention numerous Nobel Laureates among both faculty and alumni.)

Overall, the U.S. dominated the list, claiming 46 out of the 100 spots. Rounding out the top 10 for 2018 is Stanford University (1), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2), Harvard University (3), University of Pennsylvania (4), University of Washington (5), Belgium's KU Leuven (7), U.K.'s Imperial College London (8), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (9), and Vanderbilt University (10).